Half a Day in Chinatown, Singapore

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum is a relatively new compound and building smack right in the heart of Chinatown. According to some information, it was modelled after the Tang Dynasty architectural style and took about 2 years and SGD62 million to build. Its comes with its own website too but it just looks terrible. There is not much information about the temple simply because its a modern building without a history but a means to attract tourists and visitors from other neighbouring countries such as China. To me its just another horrible looking building that Singapore is fond of making.

In most times, I won't sketch the temple since it has no historical significance, even though it housed an ancient relic that belong to Buddha himself.  But if you are visiting it for the first time, it is quite worth it to take a look at the interior, which is very beautifully decorated with ancestral tablets, huge buddha statues and many interesting artefacts. I would try sketching inside the temple one day, and hopefully no one drive me out then.

Normally I really try not to draw it also because it looks darn too complicated to draw. That day I felt like drawing it because I had a lot of time to spare, and I was up to the challenge to draw every single detail I can see. I was waiting for my students to finish their assignments too.

This was done on an A3 sketch block with cartridge paper. I told myself to take my time to do this but I was able to finish it within an hour or less. Done with a brush pen, I was able to make my brush strokes more gestural and instead of drawing details, I am using shapes to suggest details. I posted this and to my surprise it garnered more than 600 Likes on Facebook. Here's the screen grab:


I am not sure what people like about this drawing, maybe it just looks complicated. Of course this was not the only drawing I did.



This was done as a warm up. Brush pen on A3 sketch paper.



Fountain pen on A3 sketch paper. This too has a lot of details but there weren't that many Likes on Facebook. I do include some drawings of people too.



At the end of the day, I did a small watercolour painting on the Perfect Sketchbook at Katong 112 after delivering some paintings to a neighbouring hotel, Hotel Indigo which is opening in July.